Re: pg_terminate_backend for same-role

On Fri, Mar 16, 2012 at 8:14 AM, Daniel Farina <daniel(at)heroku(dot)com> wrote:
> Parallel to pg_cancel_backend, it'd be nice to allow the user to just
> outright kill a backend that they own (politely, with a SIGTERM),
> aborting any transactions in progress, including the idle transaction,
> and closing the socket.

+1

> I imagine the problem is a race condition whereby a pid might be
> reused by another process owned by another user (doesn't that also
> affect pg_cancel_backend?).

Yes, but I think it's too unlikely to happen. Not sure if we really
should worry about that.

> Shall we just do everything using the
> MyCancelKey (which I think could just be called "SessionKey",
> "SessionSecret", or even just "Session") as to ensure we have no case
> of mistaken identity? Or does that end up being problematic?

What if pid is unfortunately reused after passing the test of MyCancelKey
and before sending the signal?

Regards,

--
Fujii Masao
NIPPON TELEGRAPH AND TELEPHONE CORPORATION
NTT Open Source Software Center